Loewenstein family papers

Claude Loewenstein was born on February 12, 1928 in Luxembourg to Armand and Henriette(née Cahen) Loewenstein. He had an older sister, Fernande. The family owned a shoemaking supply business in Luxembourg; after the German invasion of Luxembourg in 1940, Armand sold supplies to German soldiers. In the late summer of 1940, anti-Jewish measures began and the business was confiscated. In the fall, most of Luxembourg's Jews were sent to France and shuttled between the occupied and unoccupied zone. The family was eventually sent to Gurs, where Armand and Claude were separated by Henriette and Fernande. In December, Armand’s sister and brother-in-law, Celestine and Alfred Weil, arranged for their release, and the Loewensteins left the camp the following month. For the next twenty-two months they lived openly in the small town of Saint Antonin in Tarn-et-Garonne. In August 1942, they were rearrested and sent to Gurs and separated again. Claude and his father lived in the French section; Claude received a rudimentary Hebrew education and celebrated his bar mitzvah while in the camp. After several months, a non-Jewish aunt negotiated for the family’s release and they went to the small village, Saint Romain d’Urfe. Claude got a job with a farmer who employed other young Jewish men to pick and transport produce.In July 1944, a group of members of the Franc-Tireurs et Partisans raided the farm to search for gasoline; all 15 of the workers left to join the partisans. In one operation the partisans climbed a mountain over-looking a road and dropped home-made grenades on an open truck filled with German soldiers thereby disrupting the convoy. The partisans then opened machine gun fire on the Germans. Claude, now sixteen years old, also participated in the liberation of Lyons. After the war ended, Claude reunited with his family and then returned to Luxembourg in early 1945, where Armand reestablished his business. Claude joined the Luxembourg army and served in the occupation of Bitburg before going to technical college in England to study tanning and shoemaking. He immigrated to the United States in April 1956 and married Marion Bissinger the following year.